And when Aristide's will is produced, it is unsigned. Also, she is having an affair with Laurence Brown, private tutor for the Leonides children. She did administer the fatal insulin injection. The others suspect her of killing Aristide, especially Roger, who denounces her as a gold-digging slut. His domineering wife Clemency is a plant biologist with extensive knowledge of poisons.Īristide's second wife, Brenda, is much younger, a former Las Vegas casino dancer. The younger son, Roger, is managing director of a major family business, but is a failure, requiring multiple bail-outs from Aristide. Philip and Magda provided Aristide with three grandchildren: Sophia, Eustace (a teenager crippled by polio), and Josephine (a clever 12-year-old, who spies on everyone and writes it down in her notebook). Edith stalks around the grounds, blasting moles in the lawn with a shotgun.Īristide's elder son, Philip, hated his father for passing him over as successor to the family business, and for refusing to fund production of a screenplay he wrote for his wife, Magda, a fading theatre actress. She despised her brother-in-law as a parvenu and for his callousness towards his grandchildren. Lady Edith de Haviland was the sister of Aristide's late first wife she moved in to care for her motherless nephews.

All of them get substantial bequests from Aristide's estate but all resented the way he bullied and manipulated them. Charles seeks the consent of Chief Inspector Taverner of Scotland Yard to look into the case, utilising his personal connection with Taverner, who had served with Charles's father, a decorated former Assistant Commissioner.Īt the Leonides estate, Charles interviews the various members of the family, finding motives for each of them. Charles reluctantly takes on the case, in part because he had a brief love affair with her in Cairo. Sophia believes this was deliberate, not accidental. Sophia notes that Aristide's regular insulin injection had been laced with eserine from his eye drops, causing a fatal heart attack. She wants Charles to investigate Aristide's death, and suspects he was murdered by a member of their sprawling and idiosyncratic family. The granddaughter of late Greek-British business tycoon Aristide Leonides, Sophia Leonides, visits private investigator Charles Hayward in his office. ( February 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise.

This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.

Crooked house by agatha christie